3 ms·

I look it as a good experiment to find the right amount of auto to use. Go to one extreme and then see what bites you in practise, then make changes to where yo

• AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Note that "the right amount" depends not just on your personal taste, but also on the experience level of others who use your code.
• 72deluxe 9y ago
  Yes, I think auto for iterators is good but for return types it doesn't help any poor developer left to maintain your code in 20 years time (even 2 years). Dealing with an extensive large and complex 5 million line C++ codebase at the moment where many of the original developers have left leaving zero documentation, design documents or specs, or even sensible comments, I truly increasingly cherish readability and understandability of any small portion of code without having to get a holistic overview; I should be able to understand what it's doing in isolation - auto as a return type or as a deduced return type doesn't help me see what something is doing from the calling site without having to wade through reams of other function calls or step into them; I think time will not be kind to it if overused.
  • daemin 9y ago
    A good rule to follow would be that whenever auto is used the type that it would otherwise be has to be present in the statement, or that it's an iterator. That results in still seeing what type you have but not having to repeat yourself.